


A Cherished Alienation

by Little Otter (Macedon)



Series: Talking Stick/Circle [3]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Maquis, Native American Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1996-05-06
Updated: 1996-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macedon/pseuds/Little%20Otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janeway makes a surprise visit to Chakotay's Talking Stick meeting and is surprised in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Frogs and Prejudice

**Author's Note:**

> The spelling "manitto" is not an error, but a dialect difference. This term for the numinous, the spirits, is more commonly rendered manitou, but can also be found mannito, just as the Algonquian for the Great Spirit is found both Gicimanitou/tto and Kitchimanitou/tto. It is a problem of transliteration.
> 
> Originally posted at the [Trekiverse](http://trekiverse.org/efiction/viewstory.php?sid=8) archive.

> "I wanted to learn the white man's secrets. I thought he had better magic....Seven years I was [at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania]....They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get civilized....We all wore white man's clothes and ate white man's food and went to white man's church and spoke white man's talk. And so after a while we also began to say Indians were bad....I tried to learn the lessons—and after seven years I came home....The chiefs said to my father, 'Your son who calls himself Rafael has lived with the white men.... He has no hair. He has no blankets. He cannot even speak our language and he has a strange smell. He is not one of us.'"
> 
> Sun Elk, Taos Pueblo

 

"Frogs and Prejudice"

It was an argument over frogs that made me choose.

I was seven years old, impatient for eight and the independence of my own scooter bike. But at seven, my mother said I was too small to fly alone, so I would sneak away with Avery and Bill on theirs whenever I could. Come evening, we would return, full of ourselves and dirty with Oklahoma dust churned up by tiny engines which spurted dry clouds in our wake. Avery was two years my senior, Bill one. It made me feel important to go flying with bigger boys. And, truth be told, it made me feel important to go flying with friends who did not live on reservation ground.

Old prejudices eel their way from camouflaged lairs in "harmless archaic flatscreen shows" and curl up in the minds of children who are too young yet to recognize covert racism parading as sympathy and "respect for a proud people." A proud people, my foot. A _frozen_ people—frozen in time by white Western nostalgia, reduced to some esoteric idea of Indian "pureness" which is then refined, enshrined, tagged and displayed as "The Authentic Native American Soul." Those who don't fit homogenized red are labeled rebellious, or reactionary, and sometimes—if the labelers want to get really nasty—"apple." Red on the outside, white on the inside. But it's not whites who use the term apple. Thus we absorb even their stereotypes. Shame drives us to flee our culture, or freeze it.

It was frogs that made me choose.

***

On this particular day, Avery, Bill, I, and a net and pail were headed out to Rattlesnake Ridge. It had rained two nights before, a hard rain that had soaked the Oklahoma dustbowl and would, we knew, add to The Pond under the north face of the ridge. The Pond amounted to a thumbprint in the earth where rainwater would stand for a while until summer heat baked it away, leaving parched pentangles of cracked mud. This was the latest rain in two weeks of storms. The Pond was a respectable size, about thigh-deep in the middle. But it was not swimming which had brought Avery, Bill and I out on scooter bikes to the north face of Rattlesnake Ridge.

It was frogs.

Tadpoles, to be exact.

Frogs didn't realize The Pond wouldn't last. The females laid eggs in it and, if there were rains enough—as there had been—those eggs would hatch. The Pond would roil with tadpoles. It was to rescue the tadpoles that we had come. Avery's idea, actually. His grandfather was a Vulcan and Avery had inherited Vulcan black hair and Vulcan respect for life—if not Vulcan coolness. The thought of legions of beached tadpoles abandoned to fry set his face grim with Red-Cross Rescue determination. He had called out his guard—Bill and I—and together we set out for The Pond.

"Chakotay, hold the pail _still_; you're sloshing the water over the edge." Avery was wielding the net while Bill paced in his footsteps: a shadow as black as Avery's hair, as black as the tadpoles in my pail.

"We're running out of space," I warned, then squatted down to whisper over the rim, telling them what they would grow into, as if by naming them I could will them to live long enough. "Koka, koka, neejdee koka...." I made a little song of it.

Avery came up beside me. "What on Earth are you saying?" He dumped in more tadpoles.

I stood up, a little embarrassed and curt with it. I shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing really."

"What does 'koka' mean?"

"Frog."

"They aren't frogs _yet_," Avery pointed out with that acid Vulcan precision that I both admired and despised simultaneously.

"They will be!"

Bill had detached himself from the pondside long enough to come listen. "'Koka,'" he repeated. "Sounds like a grunt, not a word." And he dropped to the earth, hopping about in a fair frog imitation, croaking, "KoKA, koKA!"

Avery blinked, grinned. "Onomatopoeia," he said. My turn now to blink. Sometimes I wondered if he sat around at home, flipping through a dicto-pad for fun or if his grandfather made him learn words like that. Seeing both my and Bill's confused expressions, he added, "It's when you find names for things by imitating the sound they make. Lots of primitive cultures create their words that way."

Slam! Just like that, I hit the walls. It was the first time I fully realized that my friends did not _see_ the world the same way I did. It was more than language. One can translate words, but one cannot translate so easily a different way of seeing...a way of seeing that finds "koka" the better word exactly because of onomatopoeia. Did that make me a primitive, a savage? Or more logical than my part-Vulcan friend? I was not sure. But I _was_ sure I didn't like the sound of "savage"—whether it was qualified by "noble" or not.

Avery, Bill and I remained friends until my parents divorced and my father took me with him to a colony world. But that afternoon when I was seven years old, I learned to be ashamed of my people, and of my language. I also learned I had two choices in society: live alienated from the larger culture, or live alienated from myself. I chose the latter. It would be many years before I would come to see I had made the wrong choice, and it would be even more before I would understand that there were more choices than two...and that alienation could be precious.

 

He-d'ho!


	2. I

Tuvok had come silent to the storytelling circle: a tall figure in brown robes like the wings of a fruit bat. He approached the group as he lived: on the edge of things, watchful, maybe a little suspicious.

Janeway came loud.

I was there already, propped on the corner of a table, chatting with Kes about a new strain of tomato she was trying to breed, a variation on yellow pears. Tuvok, who was a closet horticulturalist, had mentioned to Kes that my father had raised tomatoes. That was all Kes had needed to set out after me like a bear after honey. "My _father_ grew the tomatoes, not me," I was telling her when I glanced at the door.

My jaw dropped wide enough to catch flies.

Janeway. Janeway in a bottle-green pantsuit which set off her hair and made her look taller than she was. Beads in gold and green glass hung about her neck and from her ears, catching the dim light and flashing. She called out something to Tom Paris as if her appearance here was no more than we should all have expected.

It wasn't flies I needed to catch, it was my balance. I shut my mouth, mind spinning. How dare she do this without warning me.

"How dare she?" another part of my mind mocked. "You invited her." I had. I had, indeed, invited her. Needled her even. And she had risen to the challenge. Could I?

She had approached Paris to set a hand on his arm and exchange greetings with he and Kim and B'Elanna. The three junior officers made generous room for her on their blanket—on B'Elanna's blanket to be precise. At my side, Kes was watching me. I could feel her eyes. It's unsettling when someone not quite four years old and pretty as a pixie gives you the appraising glance of a tribal elder. An amused tribal elder. She picked up the Talking Stick where I had laid it on the table beside my hip and handed it over. She did not speak. Kes knows the value of words without words.

The rest of the group was settling down, too. Eyes slanted towards the captain in green, then towards me. The hands of my ancestors held me up as I walked towards the circle and sat. Her eyes met mine, flashed to the stick I held, then returned to my face: calm, patient, trusting that I would know what to do with this appearance. I felt the sweat start under my arms.

I had made it my duty to welcome each new person the first time they attended the circle. But what the hell was I supposed to say to the captain? Welcome, ma'am, to your own mess hall? And for God's sake, what was I supposed to _call_ her?

Part of the established ritual of my greeting involved welcoming new people by name. No uniforms here. No titles either. Some had only the one name to use, like Tuvok. Most went by first names, though a few wore last names naturally. Paris was Paris. Only Harry Kim and B'Elanna called him Tom. Harry, B'Elanna, and the captain.

Harry, B'Elanna and _Kathryn_.

No titles here. And this was not a woman on whom a last name hung well.

I set the Talking Stick across my knees. "Welcome to the storytelling circle, Kathryn."

Her face could not have turned whiter had I slapped her.


	3. II

For two years now I had served under Janeway. I had never called her by her first name; I used captain, or Captain Janeway. Occasionally, Captain Kathryn Janeway. Never Kathryn. My decision. My gift to her authority. Because I had taken the position of first officer as a step down from captain myself—and there were still some who thought I should occupy the center seat—I was careful not to threaten in any way the auctoritas of the woman who did sit there. So I had refrained from using her given name, and she had never offered it. I think that was instinct on her part. On mine, it was a thoroughly weighed choice.

Yet in the storytelling circle, if I granted her rank, I would destroy the special dynamic which allowed the circle to function the way it did. Out here, there was no furlough, there was no family, no time for the uniform and pips to come off, no leveler that returned us our humanity at the end of a detail. People could not live in uniform twenty-four hours a day for seventy years. Not even Tuvok. Not even the captain. But did she know that?

She was still glaring at me. I turned to face the circle. I could not back down or we would all lose our balance. The others were flailing; I could see it in their expressions. The best I could do was play ignorant of the captain's irritation and give her some space to mull over things for herself. In the end, she would make her own place here. Or not. I held up the Talking Stick in silent question. Or maybe a silent plea for someone to bail me out.

The person who did surprised me.

Tuvok took the stick. Standing, he faced the captain and—with all the deliberation of Vulcans and the perspicacity of six years of service under her—said, "Welcome to the circle, Kate." Then he began to speak. It was a bland tale, not really a story at all; he had just wanted to get that stick into his hand. I did not dare look at Janeway.

Kes spoke next. Of course. She took the stick from Tuvok, turned to Janeway smiling that charming, disarming, thoroughly calculated smile and said, "I am so glad you finally joined us, Kathryn." Only Kes could say 'so glad' and make it sound anything but trite. Then she slid smoothly into her story. But Kes was slyer than Tuvok. She told about a recent quarrel between her and Neelix over a name for the child she carried. At the end, patting the natal pouch on her shoulder and not so much as glancing at Janeway, she finished, "What do the rest of you think we should name her? We need to resolve this issue of  
names."

I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. Kes was born a psychologist. But it was Paris who said, "Why not name her Kathryn, after our fearless leader?" And he smiled at the woman sitting beside him. It gave me an excuse to finally look at the captain.

She was bearing up. The tensile brittleness had gone out of her face, replaced by a slightly bewildered blankness. She blinked at me. I smiled back. She did not return it.

Your ass is cooked, I thought to myself.

I saw her glance at Tuvok; he raised an eyebrow. Her lips thinned.

Both our asses were cooked.

She was very silent for the rest of the evening. Following Tuvok, Kes had tried to set a pattern by calling Janeway by name. Had Janeway not closed up like a tower, had she at least laughed at Paris' jest, it would have worked. But she did close up, drawbridge raised. No one else dared to imitate Kes' example. When the circle broke up for the night, she beat an early retreat. I had half-feared she would wait in the corridor to haul off Tuvok and I by our ears like a pair of naughty boys. As it was, Tuvok and I walked back to our cabins alone. In the turbolift, he glanced at me. "She did not expect that."

"I didn't know she was coming." It was not a direct response to his statement, but he followed the shift and nodded. "By the way," I added, "Thanks." He nodded again. We said nothing else.

I frittered about my cabin for most of the evening, expecting a summons from the captain that never came. The next day, when I arrived on the bridge, she glanced at me, greeted me normally. I wondered if this meant she had thought things through last night and understood. But I still dreaded our regularly-scheduled meeting at the close of shift. With good reason, as it turned out.

At 1600 exactly, I buzzed her ready-room door. "Come," she said. Infoboard held out before me like a shield, I entered. Glancing up, she gave her I'll-be-with-you-in-a-minute smile and gestured to my usual chair. "Have a seat, Joseph."

Ah—the artful slice. I recognized exactly what she was doing. On the one hand, she did understand my decision of the night before. On the other, she still resented it and was playing a bit of tit-for-tat in private. Except she had picked the wrong thing to tat.

I burst out laughing.

Startled as a deer, she looked up. Then she grinned, too. "Surprised? So was I, last night. You could have warned me."

I sat down. "You could have warned me you were coming, and I would have." I eyed her, then leaned back and crossed my arms. "I rather think you enjoyed taking me off guard."

"Have to keep you on your toes somehow," she said.

Passing her the infoboard, I clasped my hands between my knees and watched while she glanced it over. "You know," I said, "Joseph isn't my given name. That's the reason I laughed. You've been calling me by my given name all along. Chakotay."

Her turn to eye me. "'_Joseph_ Chakotay' is what's in your record, commander."

"Joseph is...a place-holder, if you will. My mother named me Chakotay at my birth. When I had my puberty fast—my vision quest—I received a new name after the fashion of my father's people. Peshewa. It means 'Wildcat'. But Earth Records don't take kindly to cultures with fluid naming customs. I kept Chakotay for common use; Peshewa I employ only in special cases." I hesitated, then told her anyway because Tuvok knew and what Tuvok knew, she knew. "It was my code name in the maquis."

She smiled. "Appropriate. I didn't understand the significance before. So how did you get Joseph?"

"Starfleet gave it to me." She raised both eyebrows in a silent question; I shifted posture slightly. "Programmer's glitch in Starfleet records. Most cultures of any size develop a naming system which includes some form of surname or clan name. In short, everyone has at least two names. Even Vulcans. Hell, Vulcans have _five_ when they want to trot them all out."

She hid a smile behind her hand. "Most of which are unpronounceable."

"Only if your native language lacks the glottal stops and velars. I understand Semitic speakers have no problem."

"What? You're a closet linguist, too?"

I just grinned, went on with my story. "As it happens, those few cultures which do employ single names with no adjuncts are all alien—except for a few of Earth's aboriginal peoples. I was hardly the first Indian in Starfleet, but the others I knew of had dual names—white names—to use; they didn't face my problem. I had two choices: get continually filed under 'alien' or use a place-marker name."

"Joseph is hardly the equivalent of 'X'."

"It's what my first roommate called me: Chief Joseph. He was from Senegal and didn't know shit about Indians, but somewhere he had read of Chief Joseph and Crazy Horse. He called me both by turns, as a joke. I think he meant well, but I didn't take it well. Around the same time, Records was spitting back my files because my name didn't conform to White Man's database. So when the woman behind the desk insisted I had to have a first name—or a last name—not 'just Chakotay', I told her, 'Then call me Chief Joseph' and walked out. It was a smart-assed answer, and I deserved what she did. She put 'Joseph' in my records. I spent the next four years explaining to every piece of brass who interviewed me that No, I didn't go by either Joe or Joseph."

It was meant to be funny. This time, it turned on my tongue and cut me. Bitterness bled.

She asked the obvious question. "Why didn't you just use the X? Or give the name Peshewa?"

Why hadn't I? "I was young and I was angry," I said. "And I was embarrassed for being Indian."

"Being different."

"When you're barely seventeen, it matters."

Tilting her head, she asked the next obvious question. "Why didn't you have it changed, later?"

I smiled faintly. "Because Chief Joseph was a great leader and I was headed for command. I can think of worse names to wear."

She gave me a look that said she suspected there was more to it. She was right. But I wasn't inclined to tell the more. Not just then. Even to her.


	4. III

Myeengun, my manitto, my spirit guide, speaks to me sometimes in whispers that I do not understand. Or she appears at the edge of vision, ducking away shy when I look her full-on. It's a canted awareness of reality. In order to see all there is to see, we must learn to see dim, my father used to say. Myeengun has taught me to see dim: a silver shadow, all yellow eyes and toothy grin. I think she chose me because I amuse her. Or she pitied me. I've never been able to decide which. Perhaps it does not much matter. I belong to her.

But she is not a constant presence in my life. I'm no meda, no muskekewininee—no shaman—to see visions regularly. When she comes, she tends to come in dreams. Those few times I have seen her with my physical eyes—when, waking, I have walked between worlds—were pivotal times. And never had it happened on a ship. Myeengun does not like steel walls and artificial light.

So when she appeared, sitting bold as you please before the door to the mess hall, tongue lolling like a patient dog, I was set quite off the mark. I had been headed in a little early to prepare the room for that evening's storytelling circle. Seeing Myeengun, I slowed my pace and halted perhaps fifteen feet away. I was very aware of the weight of my Stick in my hands. The manitto are not always safe. A myeengun, even a myeengun manitto, is still a myeengun. A wolf. "Needjee," I greeted her. Friend. I was glad I was alone. I would have hated to try to explain to another crewmember why I was talking to a timber wolf in the middle of Voyager's corridor.

She blinked at me. I came a few steps nearer. She allowed it, but stayed in front of the doorway, blocking my entrance. It was clear she did not intend to let me pass. I wondered what this meant. Perhaps she would tell me. Reaching inside my shirt for the red leather bag which hung against my chest, I pushed the top open with my fingers and emptied part of the contents into my hand. Separating out the dry brown threads of saemauh—tobacco—I put the rest back. Hand shaking, I offered the saemauh to her, held out on the flat of my palm. Her head snaked forward and she sniffed at the offering. Then she struck the bottom of my hand with the top of her nose so that the saemauh flew up into the air. It never came down. It just disappeared.

Standing up then, she headed off down the corridor. I was not sure what I was supposed to do but she paused to glance back at me. I followed. She led me into the turbolift, which started without being told where to go. When it stopped, it opened on the corridor leading to the officers' cabins. The whole time, we saw no one. This is the way of visions. When the manitto speak, it is sacred time, not clock-time. We step outside ourselves. Myeengun led me down the corridor and up to Janeway's door. Then she kept on going right through the metal, and disappeared.

She left me with a thought. "The circle is not complete, Peshewa."

I stood there a while; time resumed around me. I was aware of other crewmembers passing, coming off duty or going on. Across the hall, the door to Tuvok's cabin swished open and he emerged, dressed in his robes, ready to attend the night's circle meeting. Seeing me, he paused. "Commander?"

"Is she coming tonight, Tuvok?"

He stepped around to face me. "I presume you mean the captain? I do not know; we did not discuss it." He eyed me. "It is important to you, that she come."

"The circle isn't complete," I said, repeating Myeengun's words. He peered at me as if fearing for my sanity—or doubting my explanation...perhaps not without reason. Did I want her to come for the crew's sake—'to complete the circle'—or for mine? She completed me, too. I forced my eyes to meet Tuvok's. "She can't just come once, then never come again."

"How do you know," he asked pointedly, "that she was _not_ planning to attend tonight?"

I turned away, back towards the door. "A hunch," I said, because I didn't want to explain Myeengun to Tuvok. Raising my hand, I knocked.

The door opened almost immediately. Janeway stood there, still in uniform, a datapad in one hand. I wondered if she had been standing on the other side, listening to my conversation with Tuvok. "You'd better get dressed or you'll be late," I told her.

She glanced at Tuvok, then rubbed her forehead right between the brows, as if she had a headache. "I have a great deal of work to do—before morning—commander. I don't think I'll be coming tonight. But thanks for taking time to stop by personally and ask." She gave a tremulous smile that said her feelings of gratitude were somewhat ambivalent.

The circle is not complete, Peshewa.

But I knew Janeway. If I came at this directly, she would balk, all pride and cherished "isolation of command." To get her to come back, I would have to be as wise Ae-pungishimook, the old West Wind, and as clever as Nanahboozhoo, his son.

"Well," I said, thinking fast and hard, "I can certainly understand when duty interferes with fun, but Tuvok and I thought we'd knock in case you were going, so we could escort you." Tuvok glanced at me as if to say, What you mean 'we', Red Man?

Janeway gave us both that Look. "Maybe next time," she said. Which was exactly what I was hoping she would say.

"Whenever you decide to come," I answered, trying to sound offhand, "maybe I'll tell the story of why I kept the name Joseph." Then smiling my most innocent, hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile, I gave her a little salute with the Talking Stick and headed off. I could hear Tuvok a step behind.

In the turbolift, he glanced my way. "I believe the Terran expression is 'holding out a carrot to the horse'?"

I just grinned.

After a few more floors went past, Tuvok asked, "How _did_ you get the name Joseph? I had assumed your parents gave it to you."

Vulcans and cats, and scientists, all suffer from terminal curiosity.

"Guess you'll just have drag the captain to the circle, so you can find out." I winked at him. Then the turbolift doors whooshed open and I escaped into the hallway.


	5. IV

As I had hoped it might, the lure of a mystery brought Janeway back to the storytelling circle. But four meetings went by before she yielded to that lure.

Her initial arrival had been designed to attract notice: the captain would be on the bridge, even out of uniform. The second time she came, she came as herself, as Kathryn. She did not opt for either making an entrance or slipping in unseen. The others in the circle noticed the difference. It was from nothing she said; it was a matter of posture, an indefinable aura of openness which told them, "I am with you," not "I am your captain." They moved easier, greeted her more warmly, and when they finally settled into the circle, they made room for her as a matter of course, not a tacit acknowledgement of her status. She chose a seat between Tuvok and Kes, a gesture of constrained apology perhaps, and a notice that this time, she was content to be Kathryn.

Smiling to myself, I turned the Talking Stick in my hands. "It's been a while since I've spoken in the Circle," I began. "Tonight, with your permission, I'd like to tell a story." Their acknowledgement was expectant silence.

Touching my bag beneath my shirt, I sent silent prayer to Myeengun for guidance and rose to retrieve the bundle I had brought with me. I had brought it now to four meetings of the circle, awaiting the proper time. Tonight, the proper time had finally come. The circle was complete.

From the bundle, I removed a long-stemmed pipe which I filled with saemauh and kinnikinnick—tobacco and sweet herbs. "In a circle, there is no 'head' and no 'foot,' no rank"—I glanced at Janeway—"no linear order to dictate who has the authority, who has none. Even the Elder may learn from the Child. They are closer together than they are far apart. The one is near to returning to Gicimanitto, the Great Mystery; the other has just come from it. A circle, not a line. Life is a circle. Likewise, the bowl of the pipe is a circle." I traced it with a finger. "And when we share it, we sit in a circle—just as when we tell stories. Before I share this story with you, this story of who I am, I invite you to share the pipe. White Man called it a peace pipe, but it's really a pipe of unity. Where there is unity, there is peace. It is a reminder that we are all related. As an elder of my mother's people once told me, 'To share the pipe means you quit shitting with one another.' When the white man first came to our land, he did not understand this—and we did not understand him. We would make a treaty and share the pipe with him, then he would go off and break that treaty. To him, it had just been a smoke; to us, it was holy business." I looked right at Tuvok. "So I explain it to you now. This is holy business, this circle we make. A few of you have shared the pipe with me before." Tuvok had shared the pipe then betrayed me. I would give him the benefit of the doubt, that he had not understood what he had done. "Most of you have not. So I give you a choice. If you will accept the responsibility of the pipe, if you are willing to quit shitting with one another—stay. If you are not ready, this is your opportunity to depart." I waited. None left. Kathryn had leaned forward slightly in constrained anticipation like a hound on a leash. Tuvok's face was unreadable.

"I realize that tobacco is not something used much these days. If you don't wish to actually breathe it in, you can hold the bowl of the pipe to your chest. There are many different ways of sharing the pipe, different traditions. In the plains, where my mother's father was born, when one took the pipe, he—or she—repeated the phrase, 'we are all related'. 'Mitakuye oyasin' in Lakota. But I don't want you to use Lakota. It's not your language. Instead, I ask you to remove your communicators and repeat the phrase in your own language—whatever that is. I think it's important to hear the language of the people: of ourselves. True unity doesn't come from obliterating difference, but from celebrating it. The wholeness of the tribe not only allows diversity, but _requires_ diversity. A body with 10 hands and no eyes isn't very efficient. So I ask you to remember for a moment where you come from, and to repeat 'we are all related' in your own tongue."

I lit the pipe and got it going, made my silent prayers to the manitto of each Direction: to West and North, East and South, then to Muzzu-kummik-quae, Mother Earth. Finally, I raised the pipe towards the 'sky.' "Let us join together our thoughts, our intentions, our dreams and aspirations, all our petitions and prayers as thanksgiving to Gicimanitto for having bestowed on us such bounty and beauty beyond imagination, for granting us such increase in our days that we might gather together in communion, and that we might live to see our children's children."

Then I drew on the pipe a last time, using my hand to make the smoke curl back around my head, acrid-sweet. "We are all related." And I passed the pipe. In turn and in many different tongues, forty-seven voices repeated it. When the pipe reached Tuvok, he hesitated, glanced towards me. "I accept this responsibility," he said in English. "And I apologize for profaning what I did not understand." He smoked from the pipe, coughed a little. I smiled. Before, he had chosen to hold it to his chest. "Mehe naket ur-surveh." I recognized the words; he had not repeated 'we are all related'. Instead, he had given the Vulcan greeting: "Peace and long life"—something truly from his own heritage. Perhaps I should have offered them the chance to chose their own words as I had asked them to use their own language.

When the pipe returned to me, I tapped out the ashes and chanted softly in my own tongue. "N'gah anttisookai." I call on the muses. May they grant me courage to speak the truth.

Pulling a chain out of my pocket, I dropped it in the center of the floor. Gold pooled fluid, winking in low light. "In chemistry, I learned that was called AU, atomic number 79. In truth, it's poison. It sends people mad. In 1860, it was found on Nez Perce land. The Nee Me Poo, the Real People. Up till then, the Nez Perce had been friends to the Americans. They had saved the Lewis and Clark expedition, had befriended fur traders. But in 1860 a party of prospectors stole onto the reservation and found gold. Word went out. A flood of miners came in. In 1863, the US government called together the Nez Perce and told them they had to give up nine-tenths of their land, land the US government had agreed—just eight years before—would belong to the Nee Me Poo in perpetuity." I smiled bitterly. "The 'Indian Givers' were never the Indians."

"The US demand caused general consternation, but not general agreement on what to do about it. The Nee Me Poo were a democratic people. There was no chief to speak for all; each band spoke for itself through a civil leader. Some agreed to the new treaty, mostly chiefs who, like Lawyer, would not lose their own land. Others refused to sign. Among them was a chief named Tuekakas, better known by the name of Joseph. As a young man, he had been converted to Christianity and baptized with a Christian name. Now, angry and betrayed by white lies, he led his party home. But Lawyer, pressured and perhaps drunk on firewater, signed the damned treaty in the name of all the Nee Me Poo. The government had what it wanted: a piece of paper that said Nez Perce land was theirs. They bought it for less than eight cents an acre. It didn't matter that the purchase wasn't legal. Blind justice was never blind for the Indian.

"When Joseph heard what had been done, he threw away his Bible and his white clothes and returned to the traditions and faith of his ancestors. He vowed he would never give up his land. But Joseph was an old man. He died in 1871, before he had to fight. On his deathbed, he passed responsibility for the Wallowa people to his son, Young Joseph, better known to whites as Chief Joseph, the great 'war leader.' In fact, Joseph was no war chief at all. He was a civil chief. I will tell you now the true story of Chief Joseph.

"For a while, a detente existed. No gold had been found in Wallowa country. The Nez Perce continued to live there and no white settlers came until 1871—the same year old Joseph died. For six years, they lived in peace with the Nez Perce. The US government even decided to reverse its decision of 1863, returning Wallowa land to the Wallowa. But the settlers, and the Oregon politicians, objected. So the government reversed their reversal, announcing to Joseph and his people that they must leave. Joseph was no fool. He knew how to use councils to stall. And his wisdom had won him the respect of many whites, including the general sent to remove him. Yet General Howard was white, and he finally sided with his own people. In 1877, he advised the US government they must force the Nez Perce to move. A last council was held; the debate grew heated. Some of the chiefs spoke out violently against the decision. Joseph did not. He saw there was no way to win a full-scale war with the US. They had too many troops. So he agreed to lead his people to the reservation.

"It was not to be. On the way, a young brave from another band, angry and seeking revenge for the murder of his father, attacked and killed some settlers. The Nez Perce knew they must run. Whites wanted Indian land and already thought of Indians as 'savages'. All they needed was an excuse to commit genocide. So the Nee Me Poo fled: 750 people including women and children, horse herds and baggage. This was the great Nez Perce War: US troops chasing a bunch of families, desperate and fleeing for their lives. Yet the 'ignorant savages' repeatedly defeated trained troops and their veteran Civil War officers. For 1400 miles the Nez Perce ran, out of Oregon through Idaho into Montana and Wyoming. First they headed for Crow land. But when the Crow—who had once been their allies—turned on them to keep whites off their own backs, the Nee Me Poo fled for the Canadian border to join Sitting Bull.

"Throughout the war, the skill and humanitarian behavior of the Nee Me Poo won much respect. The press erroneously credited Joseph as the leader and mastermind. To salve their pride, white generals called him the Red Napoleon—a military genius. In truth, it was Looking Glass and Lean Elk and Poker Joe who spoke most often in the council. But a myth had been born. Whites have always seen Indians the way they want to see them, not the way they are. The myth of 'war chief' Joseph is just one more example of that.

"They almost made it. Forty miles from the Canadian border, they were surprised on an open plain, their horses driven off. A five day siege followed. Finally, the children freezing, the war chiefs dead, Joseph surrendered. 'It is cold, we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death,' he said. 'I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.'

Joseph and his people were not allowed to return to the reservation to which they had been bound. They were shipped to a malaria-ridden area of Kansas where many died, then on to Indian Country—Oklahoma. For years, Joseph fought legal battles to secure their return. In 1879 he even spoke before the president—Hayes, at the time. In 1885, he and his exiles were allowed to go back. Their return met with resistance. The whites in Oregon called them 'savages and murders'. Once again to please the protestors, the government reversed its previous decision and sent them to Washington territory. In 1904, Joseph died, 'of a broken heart,' the physician said. He was only 64 years old."

I had been standing while I told Joseph's story. Now, I squatted down to put myself on a level with the rest of the circle. "When I left home for Starfleet Academy, I was sixteen, almost seventeen. I had received my scholarship on the strength of my programming skills. Most of my childhood and youth I had spent as a Net Monkey—a wizard of the virtual world. I could break into anything. Or out of anything. The world of computers was clean and unambiguous, and linear. White Man's paradise, an Elder called it once. Created reality to escape the reality that is. But I preferred it. I could live in a virtual world and escape the real one around me, forget that I had one foot in white society and one on the red road. A divided life. I wanted both feet someplace. Yet I found that whichever way I stepped, I was alienated from myself. For a while, the white world, the world of the majority, appealed. I was content to forget I had been born Indian. After all, the Indians were a conquered people and who wants to count himself among the losers? I was a good little assimilated red boy. Starfleet was my Carlisle Indian School. Like the children who had been sent there, I learned to laugh at my own people. Did I want to be an Indian? No! Indians were 'savages'—primitives. They embarrassed me.

"But when I got to Starfleet, I found I had a little problem—related to being Indian, of course, which made it intolerable. I had been given only one legal name: Chakotay. If I wanted to be the same as everyone else, wanted to escape my alienation, I needed to have two names. My first roommate—as a jest—had taken to calling me 'Chief Joseph' so when the officer in Records demanded that I chose a second name as a place-marker, I told her 'Call me Chief Joseph.' I was angry. Having only one name had made me feel different yet again. But 'Joseph' is precisely what she put in my records. I became Joseph Chakotay. At first, I was unsure whether to be amused or insulted. I considered changing it. I do have a second name, given me in adolescence, but it reminded me of my father and my Indian heritage. I dallied. In the meantime, the outcome of our senior War Games made me decide to leave my name as it was. I had decided that being the Red Napoleon was not such a bad thing after all."

Janeway suddenly sat up straight and blurted out, "YOU'RE the Red Napoleon? My God! I spent my entire freshman year hearing about the Red Napoleon!"

There was scattered laughter. Embarrassed, Janeway put a hand over her mouth. I just grinned and did not reply, went on with my tale. "I had got into the academy on the strength of my programming skills but during my first year, my advisor suggested that I switch from science to command-track. And, being command-track, that meant I led a unit in the War Games. But I was not the one who chose the name of that unit; they named themselves. My Second had learned that my roommate called me 'Chief Joseph'. He did a little research and suggested a name: Nee Me Poo. At first, I was embarrassed. I saw it as just another case of White Man using an Indian tribe for a mascot, along with tigers and bears and other wild things. 'Savage' haunted me. Except he had not suggested the white man's name: Nez Perce. He had suggested ours: the Nee Me Poo. My unit was trying to honor me, not make fun of me. They wanted me to be their Red Napoleon. Yet, even in the midst of their respect, that old myth remained. They wanted a person who had never existed.

"Nevertheless, I accepted it. I studied what Looking Glass had done, what Toohoolhoolzote had done. But I also studied Sitting Bull and Tecumseh, Crazy Horse and Geronimo, Little Turtle and Red Cloud. And I discovered something—those war chiefs were _good_. In the end they lost not because they were less clever than the whites, but because they were outnumbered. I rediscovered pride in being Indian.

"When it came time for the War Games, I transposed their tactics into space. It worked surprisingly well. Our unit made it to the final round. The night before that battle, we burned sage to purify ourselves and shared a pipe to make ourselves one. Then, the next morning before boarding our ship simulator, we painted ourselves with warpaint. They gave me a headdress with seven eagle feathers—one for each ship we had eliminated from play. It was all very silly but we were young enough still to get carried away by melodrama. Looking back, what amazes me is that none of the officers made us wash the stuff off our faces.

"We won the War Games that year, and I decided that Joseph was not such a bad name to have—but not because he was the Red Napoleon. When the last battle was over, I told my unit the truth about Chief Joseph. But in my victory speech, I quoted some of what Joseph had said to President Hayes:

"'Treat all men alike. Give all men the same law. Give all an even chance to live and grow. All people were made by the same Great Spirit. They are all brothers and sisters...Let me be a free man—free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself.'

"I decided to keep the name Joseph because I believed those words. He might not have been a military genius, but he was a wise man. That mattered more. And because I believed his words, believe the Federation existed to guarantee them, I took an oath as a Starfleet officer. I was proud to wear the uniform."

I looked down at the Talking Stick in my hands. "For more than twenty years I wore that uniform. I wanted to ensure freedom for all, ensure that justice had finally put on her blindfold for peoples of all races and colors. We had become properly 'civilized.'" I raised my eyes to Janeway, and Tuvok beside her. "Then the Federation sold out my people to the Cardassians. It was 1877 all over again and a modern committee of General Howards dressed in red admiral uniforms had decided to take our land without our consent. Nothing had changed. In four hundred years, nothing had changed. We were abandoned to the tender mercies of our new overlords. They herded us onto little squares of land—our new reservations. Four hundred years and nothing had changed. When my father went to argue against these new land restrictions, he was shot: an unarmed man. All he carried was this." I hefted the Talking Stick. "The Cardassians called it a potential weapon and shot him. The Federation did nothing but make a few protests and apologies for the 'tragic incident.' I left Starfleet that day. Like the older Joseph, I was tired of white men's lies. I threw away my 'Bible'—my Starfleet uniform—and I returned to my people. I joined the maquis."

Standing, I turned my back to the circle and raised the Stick. "Hey-d'ho!"

B'Elanna spoke next. Picking up on my cue, she told how she had come to the maquis. Gerron followed her. One by one, those of my former crew who were present told their stories, the horrors which had led them to join the maquis. They spoke until the younger Fleet officers, those like Kim who still believed the Great Federation Myth, were reduced to tears by the hard reality of a people betrayed. Rape and murder and butchered children. This was no seminar to discuss the ethics of rebellion or necessities of Realpolitik. It was a storytelling circle and my people told the stories of their grief.

When all the former maquis had spoken, the Stick returned to me. I stood. "I am, still, a man of peace. And I continue to believe those words that Joseph spoke before the President's cabinet. 'Treat all men—and women—alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men—and women—were made by the same Great Spirit. They are all brothers and sisters.' We are all related, friends: mitakuye oyasin. We are responsible for one another. We have to quit shitting with one another. The only alienation that exists is the one we create ourselves."

When the circle broke up, I busied myself in rewrapping my pipe. To speak what I had spoken exposed myself to wounding; instinct made me withdraw to protect the tender places. But I was aware that a number of Starfleet officers had approached other maquis to express sympathy. Kim had put his arms around B'Elanna, holding her for a long time—though that may have had other motivations. I grinned to myself.

A hand on my back brought me spinning around in surprise. Janeway stood there. "What you said tonight was not easy to hear," she told me. "I'm not sure right now that I can honestly say I'm glad you opened that can of worms. But another part of me knows it needed done and, quite frankly, I doubt anyone else could have done it without having it turn into a confrontation."

It was meant as a compliment, but it irritated me. It was impersonal. I had risked myself and now she stood here talking in generalities. "We never really understand another person's motivations till we hear his or her story," I replied. "I wasn't after a confrontation. But there are truths you needed to hear, wounds that are festering. We must stop being Starfleet and Maquis and become _people_. But we can't do that until we understand one another. You can't understand who I am or why I left Starfleet until you know something about what it means to be Indian, and how it feels to have your father killed because he dared to demand freedom and justice."

"'Don't judge me till you've walked a mile in my moccasins?'"

I smiled slightly. "Yes, I think someone said that once."

She looked off, didn't answer immediately. At last she said—still without looking at me—"I think you chose a good name for yourself, Chief Joseph."

"Why thank you, Kate." I gave her a little bow, moderately sardonic.


End file.
